The present application relates to a data management method and system, and in particular, to a data management method and system in which various actual result data items undergo processing and are stored or are accumulated so as to be analyzed. More specifically, the present application is suitable for retail stores such as a supermarket to conduct operations including the calculation, accumulation, or analysis of the profit for stores, sales sections, or products.
In a profit calculation system for computing profits by stores or sales sections, the profit is calculated, for example, in the following method. Depending on a ratio of the number of products or items handled or sold in each sales section, there are distributed common expenses to the respective sales sections such that the profit of each store or section is computed from the distributed common expenses and individual expenses thereof (for details, reference is to be made to JP-A-61-224068).
In addition, for the method of calculating the profit by a product, there has been proposed as a measure to evaluate the profit by a product a concept of a direct product profit (DPP) in an article of Food Marketing Institute: Direct Product Profit Manual (1986), pp. Intro-2, pp. 2-3 to 2-8. In order to attain the direct product profit, a purchase price is subtracted from a sales price at a store and a temporary reduction (rebate) to the dealer is added to the obtained value; thereafter, a direct product cost (DPC) necessary for selling the product is subtracted from the resultant value. In the computation above, there are included any costs directly required to sell a product such as the personal expenditure in the warehouse, the warehouse space charge, the inventory management cost, the cost for the transportation of products to the store, the personal expenditure in the store, the store space charge, and the personal expenditure for the employee to arrange products in a paper bag at a cash register in the store. However, the indirect costs are not included for the calculation of the direct product profit.